


she knows herself (no mercy)

by seventeencrows



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: a case of misplaced priorities and a blatant disregard for personal health and safety, for uhane's pain train competition, it starts as most terrible things do (with the little things), this was an adventure to get under 1000 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 09:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12055986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventeencrows/pseuds/seventeencrows
Summary: How unspeakable they are, the little things that set them stumbling.





	she knows herself (no mercy)

**Author's Note:**

> skidding in to uhane's pain train competition with minutes to spare. i'm trying something new with this one, so i'll see if anyone notices and how well it works, because from over here it looks a bit a mess
> 
> title is from “she knows herself to be at the mercy of events, and she knows by now that events have no mercy,” from margaret atwood's _the blind assassin_

In the end, Eiffel does it. He does it with one hand gripping the neck of the last bottle of paint-thinner vodka (or maybe just paint-thinner? he doesn't care; it doesn't matter) but he does it, because he has to. Because it's the right thing to do. Because it's only fair.

_it’s not exactly fair—_

_this is slow and aching, the creep of fire through veins instead of a lightning strike between the eyes—_

_this isn’t fair, but it sure is even._

Kepler thinks it's a terrible idea, which is new for him, novel. They pretend he's grown a conscience, that he cares, that he's sympathetic or sorry or anything other than strategic. It's hard to see beyond black and white when the world is just a chessboard, stretching out before you into a cobalt blue event horizon, but Hera likes to pretend it's because he finally,  _finally_ gives a fuck.

She tells Lovelace as much on the next rotation, in their mutual aftermath, sandwiched between a sitrep on engine capacity and a passing observation about the rapidly dwindling alcohol inventory in the Urania’s hold. Kepler’s a monster. A tyrant. A hole in the fabric of their reality where a person should fit. It's easier to think that he was against it for all the wrong reasons, to make them suffer, to make them weak, to be a _dick._ That way, when Lovelace grits her teeth and Hera stutters across the intercom and they think about what they've done, about _we need to vote_ , about _this is for the best, the right thing, we have to it's the only way we have to have to have to have to_ like a glitch, like a pinch on the back of your hand that never quite goes away no matter how deep you dig your nails in—that way, it sounds like they did it for all the right ones. That way, it doesn't seem like they settled for _easy,_ instead.

_it can be both—it isn’t often but this, this is what needed to be done._

_you can be both, too—right and scared, scared and tired, tired and still somehow hopeful. even if you call it ambition, call it sheer stubborn willpower, there is always a star to shoot for._

_maybe this one will finally lead you home._

And it was. Easy, that is; simple, straightforward, effortless, painless—although not at first, at least, but then things get better almost as soon as the cap comes loose. Cheap plastic, rubber seal, a running theme these days but that’s not part of the plan, this much vodka isn’t supposed to do much but make him forget, make him feel better, help him run his fingers along the hands of time like the keys of a dinky kid’s xylophone, turn them back like a steering wheel.

Doug Eiffel is a one-man funeral home these days.

Jacobi is furious, but then again he is a chemist at heart—which is to say he is bitter and broken, an equation unbalanced, a monster with nothing to sink his teeth into, no equivalent exchange. Eiffel doesn’t bother try to explain to him, to reach him, to tell him they’re square or that they all lost people they loved(?) or that it doesn’t fucking matter and that the scale is skewed already, is cracked and broken and _bullshit_ because there’s no just universe where this is how Renee Minkowski deserved to go out.

_it’s never about what you deserve, is it? none of you deserve any of this; this orchestra heartbeat, flow music, ebb silence and fear and all this goddamn waiting—_

_the best musicals are the ones with a tearjerker ending, a final curtain that leaves you wanting more, but the music is so loud now;_

_here comes the crescendo, hold that note, play that tune, and i don't even get a reprise._

How unspeakable it is, the little things that set them stumbling. The twitch, the grimace, the way she couldn’t put weight on one side—in space, no one can see you limp, not until they know for certain, not until it’s too late. Trauma to her leg after putting up the psi wave regulator, a crack in the bone and no time to repair it, slow rot and repeated strain and probably blood poisoning and who _knows_ what else, who even _noticed—_ well, Hilbert did, Hilbert knew and he didn’t exactly leave behind an instruction manual, a crash course in saving the life of the only person to ever give the smallest modicum of a fuck about any of them in the most pedantic, obnoxious, authoritarian way possible.

She gripped his wrist harder than he would have thought she could and he tells himself that she was still in there, somewhere, at the end of it. By the time he reaches the bottom of tonight’s bottle, Eiffel even almost believes it—that he saw the person he knew reflected back in glassy eyes (did he ever? know her, really? did the real Minkowski die before she ever set foot on this station?), that it was a gasp, when Lovelace fit the syringe in the crook of her arm, and not just an exhale, a forfeit—

Hell nor Hera can move him when the airlock doors engage and it’s almost beautiful how the body is corpse and casket all at once, blooming ice crystals like a shroud as he watches from _just_ far enough away _(Eiffel please, not you too, please step back)_ and through the slam of the door behind him as Lovelace bolts and the whine of the station that almost, almost sounds like a scream, he thinks he can hear something—not across the overhead but through the airlock glass, from the star itself, a melody slow to start and deep and keen, a condolence when there is nothing left that words can say—

_there is so much sound in this silence. i hope you get to hear it._

**Author's Note:**

> today on "zahra mashes together 1st, 2nd, and 3rd POV and pretends it isn't a tire fire"
> 
> i just realized i've written three fics in about three days and that probably says more about how i'm doing than anything i could really say. also, the melody eiffel and minkowski hear is [dido's lament by purcell](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUQu9gyt5XQ), which i find terribly fitting for the sort of person minkowski is.


End file.
